"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the letter, I handed it up to Gabord without a word. A show of trust in him was the only thing, for he had enough knowledge of our secret to ruin us, if he chose. He took the letter, turned it over, looking at it curiously, and at last, with a shrug of the shoulders, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... If thou would’st ruin ’scape, and blackest woe, Unto these words, these precious words attend: Never be heedless of a mortal foe, Nor choose a proud and envious man ...
— Little Engel - a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... between the pomp of courts and huts furnished for three hundred francs for the miserable victims of the war; but that chasm, to be sure, was bridged by the Commune and this war has shown those that have visited the Military Zone that a palace makes a no more picturesque ruin than a village. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... organization pretty closely, and I can imagine no State enterprise west of Turkey or Persia presenting even to the passing eye so deplorable a spectacle of ruin and inefficiency. The South-Eastern Company's estate at Seabrook presents the dreariest spectacle of incompetent development conceivable; one can see its failure three miles away; it is a waste with an embryo slum in one corner protected ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... the laws of civilized warfare and of the just demands of humanity which has heretofore called forth expressions of condemnation from the nations of Christendom has continued to blacken the sad scene. Desolation, ruin, and pillage are pervading the rich fields of one of the most fertile and productive regions of the earth, and the incendiary's torch, firing plantations and valuable factories and buildings, is the agent marking the alternate advance or retreat of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... unnatural, the tendency of which was to destroy the Union itself and with it all hope of realizing those blessings which we had anticipated from the glorious Revolution which had been so recently achieved. From this deplorable dilemma, or, rather, certain ruin, we were happily rescued by the adoption ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... war is nothing new: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.'' In these struggles the fight "each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... force and persuasion which avails itself of a woman's instinctive and cultivated dread of disputes and raised voices and the betrayal of contention to strangers, by the sheer tiring down of nerves and of sleepless body and by threats of an immediate divorce and a campaign of ruin against me, these three men had obliged Mary to leave Martens and go with them to Southampton, and thence they took her in Justin's yacht, the Water-Witch, to Waterford, and thence by train to a hired house, an adapted old castle ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... breaking eggs. We cannot make war without losing ships. To aim at a standard of naval strength or a strategical distribution which would make our trade absolutely invulnerable is to march to economic ruin. It is to cripple our power of sustaining war to a successful issue, and to seek a position of maritime despotism which, even if it were attainable, would set every man's hand against us. All these evils would be upon us, and our goal would still ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... love, but the resurrection of an old, supposed-to-be-dead passion that had lured him from her. Then they heard now and again rumours of Oliver Desmond's career. It seemed to be a downward one. They heard of his drinking and gambling, sinking from bad to worse; of losses, of utter ruin. Now for years they had heard nothing of him at all; he had sunk out of knowledge, gone down under the storm of not unmerited misfortune; and his world knew him ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... by stimulating the senses, another by vivifying the spiritual life within. The one commences with impulses from without, the other is guarded by forces from within. Here then is the similarity, and here the dissimilarity, which constitutes the propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salvation. One degrades, the other exalts. This contrast then is our subject ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... I say so, too. I want to fight until we win the cause so many have died for. I don't believe in Secession, but I do in Liberty. I want the South to conquer, dictate its own terms, and go back to the Union, for I believe that, apart, inevitable ruin awaits both. It is a rope of sand, this Confederacy, founded on the doctrine of Secession, and will not last many years—not five. The North Cannot subdue us. We are too determined to be free. They have ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... gate had long since been demolished, the citadel more than once injured by shot, and as to the city itself, streets of it were in ruin. But Island Battery still held its own and kept the fleet away from the city, the soldiers sickened, and the French governor held out. The incessant cannonade went on until sometimes the men wondered how it would seem not to hear bursting ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... money on board—but there is much more than this—the intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the getting through "on time" in spite of all obstacles, and the manipulation of railroad securities by evil men who wish to rule or ruin. ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... in this cooeperative organization must keep her goods up to a certain standard, for an inferior lot of goods sent to a large firm might ruin a reputation. ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... against her, and the flames of the siege overtop the height of the temples, I should have still believed in her eternity! But now all is over! all is lost! The gods execrate her! A curse upon you who have quickened her ruin by ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... enraged at the honor paid to Sir Thomas that she resolved to ruin him, and told the King that the little knight had been ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... are now. Oh, that I should have to tell such a tale to my daughter! But, Odalite, when you have heard it you will learn just what you have to do in order to save us all, and especially to save your noble, generous, honorable father from ruin and disgrace. And then, Odalite, when you have learned all, you shall do exactly as you please. Not one word of coercion, not another word of persuasion, will I utter. I will leave our fate in your hands, and you shall be absolutely free to ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Pekin. Peradventure from some whispering, going on about the house, not intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to make him understand, that things went cross-grained in the Court yesterday, and his friend is ruined. But the word "friend," and the word "ruin," disturb him no more than so much jargon. He is not to think of any thing but how to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... as you are, let him loose. Well, the woman was that Catherine that you've often heard me talk about. I like the wench, —— her, for I almost brought her up; and she was for a year or two along with that scoundrel Galgenstein, who has been the cause of my ruin." ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... devil with an iron club has just dashed down and scattered a pile of stones built by one of the children. The little ghost, seated by the ruin of its work, is crying, with both pretty hands to its eyes. The devil appears to sneer. Other children also are weeping near by. But, lo! Jizo comes, all light and sweetness, with a glory moving behind him like a great full moon; and he holds out his shakujo, his strong and holy staff, and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the world to save souls," were the words uttered with his last breath. "He who takes pains to ruin them, shall he not be called Antichrist? God built the universe in six days; but it took Him thirty years to redeem fallen man. The Church can never be delivered but by the sword from the Egyptian bondage in which ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... own mother knew that, when she took thy children from thee and cursed thee on her death-bed for thy sins and for thy shame! Thy sons were honest, God-fearing men, but 'tis no thanks to thee. Thou alone hast heaped shame upon their dead father's name and hast contrived to wreak ruin on the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... their position the road was completely hidden by the high wall with which the whole compound was surrounded. Through the foliage of the trees the outline of the old bungalow was faintly visible, and thither their earnest contemplation was directed. For both of them it was something more than a ruin, something more than a relic out of the tragic past. It had become, above all for the Colonel, a part of their lives, a piece of inanimate destiny to which they felt themselves tied by all the bonds of possession. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... she pursued, speaking to him, not me, "he ought to promise me to give up that girl. I cannot set him free to go and marry her—a stranger and adventuress. She will be his ruin. I think, for my sake, he ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... on, it will ruin us," he said. "Instead of arriving in proper order at the mouth of the passages, and occupying them before the Genoese wake up to a sense of their danger, we shall get there one by one, they will take the alarm, and we shall have ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... instruments. What would I not have given to have spoken to Zeenab, or even to have observed her at a distance! But I knew that it would not be prudent to ask many questions concerning her, as suspicions, dangerous both to her and me, might arise, and probably involve us in immediate ruin. Indeed, had I been inclined to give myself much stir on the subject, it would have been to no purpose; for very shortly after I heard the salute fired from the Zamburek camels, which indicated that the Shah had alighted from ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... force combined, To shake the man with firm, though tranquil, mind! Guided by Justice and by Wisdom's laws, Secure he stands to guard his righteous cause. What—tho' in awful haste the tott'ring world, By Heaven's command, be into ruin hurl'd: As on a rock unshaken he remains, Upborne by Him who all the just sustains! Destruction's thunders rage from pole to pole— Yet he undaunted smiles, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... to a degree painful to me, that although my mind seems as well as ever, yet I am sure that I cannot long do my duty, and there is nothing I dread so much as sitting upon a great seat of justice as a kind of ruin, and in a state of decay. In my seventy-fourth year, I am not sure that avarice may not lay hold of me, and tempt me to stay where I am, until I feel or am made to feel, by being told that I have stayed too long; and that peevishness too, an attendant upon old age, may not put an end to that ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... man whose very movements sway the money markets of the world, the man who could, if he chose, ruin any nation, make war impossible; who could if he had ten more years of life and was allowed to live, draw to himself and his own following the entire wealth of ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... For he had fallen into that stage when men have the vertigo of misfortune, court the strokes of destiny, and rush towards anything decisive, that it may free them from suspense though at the cost of ruin. It is one of the many minor forms ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not? like all those strange insensibilities which prepare us for death" (she made a gesture full of pious unction). "All things served me then," she continued; "the disasters of the monarchy and its ruin helped me to bury myself. My son consoles me for much. Maternal love takes the place of all frustrated feelings. The world is surprised at my retirement, but to me it has brought peace. Ah! if you knew how happy the poor creature before you is ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... that the little pair were not utterly discouraged, for a day or two later we found the provident mistress carefully drawing out of the ruin some of the material she had woven into it, and carrying it away, doubtless to add to a fresh nest. But she had this time chosen a more secluded site, that we were unable to discover. I hope she did not credit ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... deserted house of prayer As money's worth a layman landlord's own. Then use it as thine own; thy mansion there Beneath the shadow of this ruinous church Stands new and decorate; thine every shed And barn is neat and proper; I might search Thy comfortable farms, and well despair Of finding dangerous ruin overhead, And damp unwholesome mildew on the walls: Arouse thy better self: restore it; see, Through thy neglect the holy fabric falls! Fear, lest that crushing guilt should ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... is easily answered. The finest part of our city has been blown to smithereens, and burned into ashes. Soldiers amongst us who have served abroad say that the ruin of this quarter is more complete than any thing they have seen at Ypres, than anything they have seen anywhere in France or Flanders. A great number of our men and women and children, Volunteers and civilians confounded alike, are dead, and some fifty thousand men who have been moved with military ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... captive thrall Comes to the place where he before had sat Among the prime in splendor, now depos'd, Ejected, emptied, gaz'd, unpitied, shunn'd, A spectacle of ruin or of scorn." —Milton, P. R., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... countries: in France, it reached nearly its extreme limit during the existence of assignats. We have ourselves experienced some portion of the misery it creates; but by a return to sounder principles, have happily escaped the destruction and ruin which always attends the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... It appears farther, that he rather unreasonably extended a portion of his indignation to the Admiral, who, of course, had nothing to do with his appointment; and this sulky frame of mind might have proved the captain's ruin, had his Admiral been any other than Nelson. But the genius of that great officer appeared to delight in such occasions of recalling people to a sense of their duty, and directing their passions and motives into the channels most useful to themselves and their country. Knowing the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... is right; we should speak out, and not hide this bitter fact any longer. The world will pity us, and we must bear the pity, but it would condemn us for deceit, and we should deserve the condemnation if we let this misery go on. Living a lie will ruin us all. Bella will be destroyed as Helen was; I am only the shadow of a man now, and Hal is killing himself as fast as he can, to avoid the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... him now," replied Mrs. Mowbray; "he is one who has ever been connected with the family. He had a daughter, whose beauty was her ruin: it is a sad tale; I cannot tell it now: you have heard enough of misery and guilt: but that may account for his bitterness of speech. He was a dependent upon my ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... went; and he said: "Thou art thinking Perhaps upon this ruin, which is guarded By that brute anger which just ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... caused the day-spring to know its place," is wise enough to give laws to the universe which it shall be safe for you and me to obey? (Applause). Into this fanaticism this world is to be educated, if it is to be saved from going down to moral ruin and death. Remember, then, O man! father, husband, brother, clergyman, and politician—remember, when these words slip so easily from your tongues, as they often do, "I grant you have the same abstract right to do this that man has," you grant all that woman claims; and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of our story. At any rate, the field bore splendid crops, and the mowers always got an extra shilling an acre for cutting it, by Miss Winter's special order, which was paid by Simon in the most ungracious manner, and with many grumblings that it was enough to ruin all the mowers ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... viziers, and in such shaving countries a barber is held in high respect. He would be all right there. But no, no, I cannot be weak over so vital a thing as this. Just think, you two, of the consequences if through some inept act on his part he should ruin all ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the fact that he foresees that harm to another will follow from them. He may charge a man with crime if the charge is true. He may establish himself in business where he foresees that [145] of his competition will be to diminish the custom of another shopkeeper, perhaps to ruin him. He may a building which cuts another off from a beautiful prospect, or he may drain subterranean waters and thereby drain another's well; and many other cases might ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... store of books of divers benefactors, because it never had any lasting allowance, for augmentation of the number, or supply of books decayed: whereby it came to pass that, when those that were in being were either wasted or embezelled, the whole foundation came to ruin:—to meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured of a standing annual rent, to be disbursed every year in buying of books, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the fault of Brihtric, Edric Streone's brother, who had some private grudge against him, and would ruin him if possible. So he accused Wulfnoth of treachery to Ethelred, and that being the thing that the king always dreaded from day to day—seeing maybe that he was not free from blame in that matter himself—so prevailed that the earl was outlawed. Whereon he ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... standing and had fallen into the clutches of a gang of blackmailers. He wanted us to take action, but he absolutely refused to go into the witness-box to give evidence. I pressed him, pointing out that that was the only way in which we could bring home anything against them. 'It will ruin me,' he declared. 'Is there no other way it can be put a stop to?' I replied that we were helpless. 'What can I do?' he cried. 'Is the thing they accuse you of true?' I asked. He flushed and admitted that it was. 'Well,' ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... and small. Until this last unhappy year I had been accustomed to look upon him in the light of a friend, or of an elder brother—I have basked in his smile as in the sunshine of a summer's day—no cloud hung over my happiness!—and all this must now go to ruin in this unlucky Venice! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Warrenton, where I got a room at a so-called hotel. Here, upon the advice of our surgeon, I made application for leave of absence on account of sickness. The red tape that had to be "unwound" in getting this approved and returned almost proved my ruin. Captain Archbald was taken sick at this time, and his application for a like leave accompanied mine. The corps surgeon, Dr. Dougherty, called with our surgeon to examine us at the hotel, and said he would approve both applications; that it would be but a day or so before ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... happy Naples. It was last autumn that I really fell to ruin. I had come out of prison filled with good intentions, with all good resolutions. My wife had promised to come back to me. I hoped she would come very soon. If she had come at once, if she only had, it might all have been different. But she did not come. I ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Harris's stories desires to have them lightened by chapters from the hand of Artemus Ward. Yet he knows the taste and the value of humor. He was one of the few men of letters who really appreciated Oscar Wilde, though he did not rally fiercely to Wilde's side until the world deserted Oscar in his ruin. I myself was present at a curious meeting between the two, when Harris, on the eve of the Queensberry trial, prophesied to Wilde with miraculous precision exactly what immediately afterwards happened to him, and warned him to leave the country. It was the first time ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... thoroughly upset: for Lily to leave him! Just when Hauptmann was starting a fifth troupe; when Pawnee was drawing full houses with his three stars; when competition was increasing and threatening: it meant disaster, certain ruin, the disbanding of his troupe, his contracts canceled. He seethed with indignation; or else, in despair, felt like taking Lily in his arms, seating her on his knee, begging her to tell him that it was all a nightmare, that she would never marry, never marry that Trampy: his good ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... have found the greatest scope in any alteration. We may hope that nothing but a true growth in such religion as needs and seeks new expression for new depth and breadth of feeling, will ever be permitted to lay the hand of change upon it — a hand, otherwise, of desecration and ruin. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Woolfolk gazed more attentively at the shore, and made out, in back of the luxuriant tangle, the broad white facade of a dwelling. A pair of marine glasses lay on the deck at his hand; and, adjusting them, he surveyed the face of a distinguished ruin. The windows on the stained wall were broken in—they resembled the empty eyes of the dead; storms had battered loose the neglected roof, leaving a corner open to sun and rain; he could see through the foliage lower down great columns fallen about a ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Macchiavelli have marvelled when he beheld the terms of the treaty the duke had made with them.) Were they mad to imagine that one so crafty as Valentinois would so place himself into their hands—the hands of men who had sworn his ruin and death? Truly, mad they must have been—rendered so by the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... hang poised for a fraction of a second on the surface of the water as if, in her death agony, she had for a moment thought of her old life when, under press of sail, she flew bounding over the billows, defying the very elements which at last had worked her ruin. Only for a moment she hung there, then with a dull crash she broke her back. The bow plunged downward with a sullen plunge, but the stern still held poised. Then, quite suddenly, the air imprisoned in the hull broke free and slowly, almost, it seemed, with ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Roger's clasp, and ran on beside the river, until, beyond the sullen waters the watch-fires flared before him, in whose red light the mill loomed up rugged and grim, its massy walls scarred and cracked, its great wheel fallen to ruin. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... whose superstructures are the wreck of temples of the kingly and republican periods, and palaces and villas of imperial times, and haughty feudal abodes, only to be distinguished from one another by the antiquary amid their indiscriminate ruin and the tangle of wild-briers and fern, ivy and trailers with which they are overgrown. On the summit no trace of ancient Rome is to be seen. There are no dwellings of men on this deserted ground: a few small and very early Christian churches have replaced the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... father's hand which had rendered her so. How empty and barren had been his conception of the burden which that deed had laid upon him! Like a flash he seemed to see the whole situation in a new light. If, indeed, she had drifted into ruin, the sin lay at his door. He should have found her a mother; it should have been his care to have watched her continually, and to have assured himself that she was contented and happy. In those few moments the whole situation seemed to change, and he even felt a hot flush of shame at his own coldness ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... day is the general atmosphere of insincerity in such matters, which is fast producing a scepticism not as to any or all theologies, but as to the very existence of intellectual good faith. Destroy credit, and you ruin commerce; destroy all faith in religious honesty and you ruin something of infinitely more importance than commerce; ideas should surely be preserved as carefully as cotton from the poisonous influence of a varnish intended to fit them for public consumption. ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... all women are not to be led away by flattery, or even by the desire to be loved, which is the hardest temptation of all to resist! Nothing so hard as that, Angela! Nothing so hard! I have often thought what a contemptible creature Goethe's Gretchen was to allow herself to be tempted to ruin with a box of jewels! Jewels! Worthless baubles! I would not cross the road to look at the biggest diamond in the world! But to be loved! To feel that you are all in all to one man out of the whole world! That would be glorious! That I have never ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... do it, for you can earn ten thousand francs. You will ruin your prospects at once. In your office at least no one knows you; you can leave it if you wish to at any time. But when you are once a riding-master all will be over. You might as well be a butler in a house to which all Paris comes to ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... of the spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. Moral ruin seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new Avatar, or Buddha, or Advent ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... both unreal and beautiful. The Panamints towered a wrinkled red grisly mass, broken by rough canyons, with long declines of talus like brown glaciers. Seamed and scarred! Indestructible by past ages, yet surely wearing to ruin! From this point I could not see the snow on the peaks. The whole mountain range seemed an immense red barrier of beetling rock. The Funeral Range was farther away and therefore more impressive. Its effect was stupendous. Leagues of brown chocolate slopes, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... his Rose-bud.—O Jack! spare thou, therefore, (for I shall leave thee often alone with her, spare thou) my Rose-bud!—Let the rule I never departed from, but it cost me a long regret, be observed to my Rose-bud!—never to ruin a poor girl, whose simplicity and innocence were all she had to trust to; and whose fortunes were too low to save her from the rude contempts of worse minds than her own, and from an indigence extreme: such a one will only pine in secret; and at last, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... present. I have reason to be thankful my son is in neither. He was very much set upon going into one or other; but I was always averse to it; for, independent of the danger, they are professions that spoil a man for domestic life; they lead to such expensive, dissipated habits, as quite ruin them for family men. I never knew a military man but what must have his bottle of port every day. With sailors, indeed, it's still worse; grog and tobacco soon destroy them. I'm sure if I had a daughter it would make me miserable if she was to take fancy to a naval or military man;—but," ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... He did not hesitate to offend Appius when it was necessary to do so by his interference. But Appius was a great nobleman, one of the "optimates," a man with a strong party at his back in Rome. Appius knew well that Cicero's good word was absolutely necessary to save him from the ruin of a successful accusation. Cicero knew also that the support of Appius would be of infinite service to him in his Roman politics. Knowing this, he wrote to Appius letters full of flattery—full of falsehood, if the plain word can serve our purpose better. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... believe in a Chamber elected by universal suffrage, and yet dares not trust the votes of the electors; but mark my words, this tampering with an election is for the last time. What will succeed the Empire, I know not. God grant it may not be our country's ruin! But the state of things under which we live cannot last long. It is incumbent on honest men to lay before the emperor the state of the country, which his ministers do their best to keep from him. For a long ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... unaccustomed to hard labour, and used to the comforts and luxuries deemed indispensable to those moving in the middle classes at home, a settlement in the bush can offer few advantages. It has proved the ruin of hundreds and thousands who have ventured their all in this hazardous experiment; nor can I recollect a single family of the higher class, that have come under my own personal knowledge, that ever realised an independence, or bettered their ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... notaries themselves, were named as guardians. The income was to be paid to Sabina at once, the capital on her marriage. The newspaper paragraph recalled the ruin of the great family, and spoke of the will as a rare instance of devotion in an old ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... voted such laws had the deliberate intention of making the Irish a nation of beggars and drunkards; but if the Irish did not become such, it certainly was not the fault of those who legislated for their own benefit, and, as far as they had the power to do so, for her ruin, politically and socially. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... which forced every unprivileged farmer and peasant in France to furnish so many days' labour for the maintenance of the highways. Arthur Young tells us, and the statement is confirmed by the Minutes of Turgot, that this wasteful, cruel, and inefficient system was annually the ruin of many hundreds of persons, and he mentions that no less than three hundred farmers were reduced to beggary in filling up a single vale in Lorraine.[163] Under this all-important head, the Encyclopaedia has ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... to night to hear her speak one word of sense; and then as she grows older, instead of having any help from her in the family, to find her a continual cause of anxiety, lest her wild humours should completely ruin us, that is quite another thing, and enough at last to weary out the patience ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... From infinite making of money and comfort, according to the laws of so-called political economy, and the dictates of enlightened selfishness? Not so. But rather out of terror and agony, and all but utter ruin—and out of a magnificent want of economy, and the divine daring and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... write to you, for Mr. Luden, a pianist from Copenhagen, is starting shortly, and for fear of delaying his journey I must be brief; but what is postponed is not lost, so cheer up, for very soon you will get a great thick letter from me, which I will take care to prepay, as I should not like to ruin you. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... his shoulders, and Adam, breaking from Marmaduke and Sibyll, passed with tottering steps to the shattered labour of his solitary life. He looked at the ruin with mournful despondence, with quivering lips. "Have you done with me?" then he said, bowing his head lowlily, for his pride was gone; "may we—that is, I and this, my poor device—withdraw from your palace? I see we are not ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the word fiasco (which means in Italian a flask, or bottle) is said to have reference to the bursting of a bottle, the complete ruin of the bottle being compared with the ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... and became almost wealthy, despite the many cruel and harassing restrictions imposed upon them by the unwritten laws of society (which yet academically held them to be purged of their offences), the grand military gentlemen and their huge estates generally went to ruin—mostly through their own improvidence, though such misfortunes, our minister, the Reverend Mr Sampson, said, in the sermons he preached in our hideous, red-brick church, were caused by an 'inscrutable Providence'—their dwellings and store houses were burnt, their cattle and sheep disappeared, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... that every dollar so paid would be expended in continuing these excavations, &c., and in completing the galleries and other modern structures which are already so peerless. Rome is too commonly regarded as only a ruin, or, more strictly, as deriving all its eminence from the Past, while in fact it has more inestimable treasures, the product of our own century, our own day, than any other city, and I suspect nearly as many as all the rest of the world. Even the Vatican is still unfinished; workmen were busy ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... soul filled with emotion, "what do you need? what do you wish? command me! Impose on me the most impossible task in all the world: I fly to fulfil it! Tell me to do that which it is beyond the power of man to do: I will fulfil it if I destroy myself. I will ruin myself. And I swear by the holy cross that ruin for your sake is as sweet—but no, it is impossible to say how sweet! I have three farms; half my father's droves of horses are mine; all that my mother brought my father, and which she still conceals from him—all this is mine! Not one of the ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... brought her back to me—brought her back to me restored in mind, but with all memory of what had passed during her dementia erased from her consciousness. Everything depended now upon my learning how much of her past she did remember. A single ill-judged word of mine—a single false move—might ruin all, and bring back the life of misery which I seemed at last to have ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the open ground, and over the stone wall, in the face of a fierce fire, settled the overthrow of Kershaw and sent a panic running down the line of Ramseur. Wright attacking with equal vigor, soon the disorder spread through every part of Early's force, and in rout and ruin the exultant victors of the morning ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... Dunmore, defended his leases, set up for a country gentleman on his own account, and sent his only son, Barry, to Eton,—merely because young O'Kelly was also there, and he was determined to show, that he was as rich and ambitious as the lord's family, whom he had done so much to ruin. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... Eauze, formerly on the Gelise, lay long in ruins, and was finally re-built a kilometre inland. Lectoure and Auch had long since retired from the river Gers and taken refuge on the hills of their present situations, while other cities fell into complete ruin and forgetfulness. ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... epitome of close-cropped neatness. When he lost money at poker his brown eyes held exactly the same twinkle as when he won, and it was current among the young men that he had played greatly in his day—great games for great stakes. Sometimes he had made heavy winnings, sometimes he had faced ruin; sometimes his family went to Newport for the summer and entertained; sometimes they went to a hotel somewhere in some mountains or other, where they didn't even have a parlor to themselves. But this summer they were living on in the town house, keeping ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... eye may fall on this story not to treat any lad who is put under his care too harshly, as it is very often the means of discouraging him in the occupation he is intended to follow, and of driving him from his home, and even from his country, and to his ruin. Thus even in my case it will be seen that it was all my master's want of kindness that forced me into a very different sort of life to that which my parents intended for me; into one which, though it was not altogether so ruinous, was perhaps more perilous than many others, ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... where we can see the ship," said Martin. He jerked the Jap to his feet, and propelled him before. "That cursed stuff sickens me," he told Little Billy, as they rapidly retraced their way. "Think of the ruin—the murder—all the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... (1122-1156), this illustrious house began to succumb to the intoxication of success, and it steadily declined in character and influence until its property was confiscated by the Constituent Assembly, in 1799, and the church sold for one hundred thousand francs. It is now in ruin. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... Improvement of the Engl. Tongue." "I believe," he added, "If I writt an Essay upon Straw some fool would answer it." But this disclaimer is ingenuous in the light of the political overtones in the Proposal; for example, the extended praise of Barley as one who saved his country from ruin "by a foreign war and a domestic faction." In fact, the lengthy panegyric of the Lord Treasurer, as well as other matter, is bluntly and deliberately partisan. It could not conceivably have been interpreted ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... swelling heart: home I would go, But that my doors are hateful to my eyes, Filled and damned up with gaping creditors! I've now not fifty ducats in the world, Yet still I am in love, and pleased with ruin. Oh, Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife— And we will bear our wayward fate together, But ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... with all of Gordon's weight behind it. The stranger's jaw buckled and gave beneath that shattering impact. Then abruptly his entire face crumpled into distorted ruin. Gordon staggered back a step in sheer horror at the gruesome result of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... you in my letter last night that we received a frantic message from our Brigadier-General to expect an attack at 4 p.m. As a matter of fact, there was less fighting than usual, and I lost fewer men. My night's experiences were almost humdrum! Leaving my ruin at 9.15 p.m., accompanied by my bugler and clad in my old waterproof, I sallied out and ran the gauntlet of some snipers from the German lines, then dived into my ditch, floundered up it in mud for about a quarter of a mile, perhaps more, secured some Engineers I have at last got hold of to improve ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... Bannockburn; "I've done with cigars. At any rate with Havanas. We're on the brink of ruin, I tell you." ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... I think that when all that jewel once more grows warm above my immoral heart, this temple which they call eternal will be but a time-eaten ruin. Hark, the priestess calls. Farewell, you man who have come out of the north to be my glory and my shame. Farewell, until the purpose of our lives declares itself and the seed that we have sown in sorrow shall blossom into ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... air; From darkness of the dreadful night, And joyful light; From antique ashes, whose departed flame In thee has finer life and longer fame; From wounds and balms, From storms and calms, From potsherds and dry bones [91] And ruin-stones. Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought; Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun White radiance hot from out the sun. So thou dost mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... though I hate all women - come, for the common folly, I forgive you. Your Highness' - she dropped a deep stage curtsey and resumed her fan - 'I am going to insult you, to betray one who is called my lover, and if it pleases you to use the power I now put unreservedly into your hands, to ruin my dear self. O what a French comedy! You betray, I betray, they betray. It is now my cue. The letter, yes. Behold the letter, madam, its seal unbroken as I found it by my bed this morning; for I was out of humour, and I get many, too many, of these favours. For your own sake, for the sake ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would not consent—the daughter might not? It was this last doubt that gave the darkest hue to my reflections. I continued them— turning the subject over and over—viewing it from every point. Surely Holt would not contribute to the ruin of his daughter—for in no other light did I regard her introduction to the society of the Mormon city? There was manhood in the man—somewhere down near the bottom of his heart—perhaps some remnants ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... millions of incensed and uncontrolled population hurled themselves against the granite foundation of the established government. Selfish heads tossed upon sleepless pillows, haunted by the thought that the dawn would break upon a great change, boding ruin to their prospects, monetary or political. Even the butterflies felt that there was a something impending; incomprehensible, but uncomfortably suggestive of work instead of pleasure. So Washington rose red-eyed and unrefreshed on the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Scott, he says, "It is a golden rule, which I try to follow, to put every fact which is opposed to one's preconceived opinion in the strongest light. Absolute accuracy is the hardest merit to attain, and the highest merit. Any deviation is ruin." ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... will not ruin the instrument," observes the lady. "Can you not do the repair without?" "We could, ma'am, if we wished to save time and run a risk." "Oh, please don't run any risk with it, now that I know that it is a valuable instrument I must ask you to take extra pains ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... physical gratifications produces in democracies effects very different from those which it occasions in aristocratic nations. It sometimes happens that, wearied with public affairs and sated with opulence, amidst the ruin of religious belief and the decline of the State, the heart of an aristocracy may by degrees be seduced to the pursuit of sensual enjoyments only. At other times the power of the monarch or the weakness of the people, without stripping the nobility of their ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... lamp, Bending above their huge and swarthy palms And tracing them to many a grisly doom. So many a night and day westward they plunged. The half-moon ripened to its mellow round, Dwindled again and ripened yet again, And there was nought around them but the grey Ruin and roar of huge Atlantic seas. And only like a memory of the world They left behind them rose the same great sun, And daily rolled his chariot through their sky, Whereof the skilled ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... would at any other time have caused an insurrection; but one half of the Parisians were occupied by their ruin, and the other half by their fancied riches, which were soon to vanish. The president and members of parliament acquiesced in the mandate without a murmur; they even went as if on a party of pleasure, and made every ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... 1840-1870. Hence the cruel compulsory exodus of vast masses of the people of Ireland to the shores of America. Hence, finally, the bitter cleavage between landlords and tenantry which brought the whole land system of Ireland crashing into ruin. ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... his star was rising. He, more than any other, with his valor, penetrating mind and decision had saved the Northern army from complete destruction the first day at Shiloh. He had not been able to avert defeat, but he had prevented utter ruin. His division alone had held together in the face of the Southern ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... present Freshman, his hopes of becoming a loyal, solid, representative college man, a tremendous power for good, at old Bannister, hang in the balance at this moment! I speak of John Thorwald. You students have it in your power to make or break him, to ruin his college years and make him a recluse, a misanthrope, or to gradually bring him to a full realization of what college life ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... squarely, and declared he would marry no woman but his cousin Lulu. It was on this subject father and son had quarrelled and parted; but for all that, James Lorimer could not see his only son taking a high road to ruin, and not make an effort to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... once did me a very good turn long ago, and now I am in a position to put a good remunerative bit of business in your way. Yet you are timid that all may not turn out well! Apparently you do not fully recognise the stake I hold in the matter, and the fact that any exposure would mean ruin to me. Surely I have far more to lose than you have. Therefore that, in itself, should be sufficient guarantee to you. Reconsider your reply, and give me your decision to-morrow night. You will find me in the saloon bar of the King Lud, in Ludgate Hill, at eight ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... a trifling, worthless lot!" she stormed. "I wish I'd never heard of them. They fastened their talons on my son Bob, and ruined his life, and now they are doing all they can to ruin my granddaughter. Haven't you ever heard them speak ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the man had ridden downward out of the high hills in search of a dwelling at which he might ask the way to Tann; but as yet he had passed but a single house, and that a long untenanted ruin. He was wondering what had become of all the inhabitants of Lutha when his horse came to a sudden halt before an obstacle which entirely blocked the narrow trail at the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... weak and hungry, Feeble from continued labor, Shivered in the blasts of winter Which blew cold across the water, Then Wan-ches-e planned their ruin, With Win-gin-a sought to ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... did not long enjoy the sway they had acquired over the trading regions of the Columbia. A competition, ruinous in its expenses, which had long existed between them and the Hudson's Bay Company, ended in their downfall and the ruin of most of the partners. The relict of the company became merged in the rival association, and the whole business was conducted under the name of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... him to part with his mistress, and even proceeded so far as to assure him, according to his instructions, that an immediate interruption of all correspondence with his most powerful friends in England, and, in short, that the ruin of his interest, which was now daily increasing, would be the infallible consequence of his refusal; yet he continued inflexible, and all M'Namara's entreaties and remonstrances were ineffectual. M'Namara stayed in Paris some days beyond the time ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... blush; and besides he kept four doors open, one to each quarter of the heavens, so that all might enter and be satisfied? Over and above this, in time of famine he scattered wheat and barley abroad, so that they who were ashamed to gather by day might do so by night; but now this house has fallen into ruin, and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... still yourself, and but remember How in this general court of short-lived pleasure, The world, creation is the ample food That is digested in the maw of time: If man himself be subject to such ruin, How shall his garment, then, or the loose points That tie respect unto his awful place, Avoid destruction? Most honored father-in-law, The blood you have bequeathed these several hearts To nourish your posterity, stands ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... connected with the best feature in my character, and the only good point to be found in my very unromantic and in no way honourable distress. For though my dejection, honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was, whether, if the reformers ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Lord Ormont's wicked conspiracy to rid himself of her. A secretary! He'll beat any one alive in plots. She can't show her face in London after this, if you don't overtake her. And she might have seen Lord Ormont's plot to ruin her. He tired of her, and was ashamed of her inferior birth to his own, after the first year, except on the Continent, where she had her rights. Me he never forgave for helping make him the happy man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the pieces which were produced at their courts. Artist or archduchess, either title was enough to turn the head of a young man twenty-four years old; but Haendel disdained her love. All the English biographers say that he was too prudent to accept an attachment which would have been ruin to both. This is calumny, for ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Cesar d'Ombre muttered in the ear of Monsieur de Bourmont, who listened with a superior smile. "Such mad violence would ruin the cause altogether. Now as hostages, those ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... time with men of his own caliber, he had learned his real weight on the day of his protest against the Easter adjournment. With that knowledge had been born the dominant factor in his whole scheme—the overwhelming, insistent desire to manifest his power. That desire that is the salvation or the ruin of every strong man who has once realized his strength. Supremacy was the note to which his ambition reached. To trample out Chilcote's footmarks with his own had been his tacit instinct from the ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... tragic fate of the Jewish people, The Gospel is not a polemical treatise, but it bears traces of recent conflicts. St. John wishes to show that the rejection of Christ by the Jews was morally inevitable; that their blindness and their ruin followed naturally from their characters and principles. Looking back on the memories of a long life, he desires to trace the operation of uniform laws in dividing the wheat of humanity from the chaff. He is content to observe how [Greek: ethos anthropo ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... longer appealed to their faithful servants. The time of Royal crusades had gone by. Sovereigns made uneasy by the effervescence of revolutions, which like a contagion spread over Europe, had enough to do to secure their own thrones, and had no disposition to ruin themselves in lifting up that of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... British markets, as long as the former shall have to bear such heavy charges of rates, taxes, assessments, and other expenses attendant on their cultivation, of which the latter know nothing: Being also convinced that the farmers of this kingdom have already suffered severely, even to the ruin of many of those who have had small capitals; and also that the evil is fast approaching to the land-owners; and must (if no relief be given to the agriculturists) evidently fall on the country at large: Feeling ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... 'surprise' in a clock, the hours of which are struck by a mechanical figure known to the town as 'Mathurin.' There was something very tempting in the look of the place, betokening plenty of flowers and shaded walks and umbrageous groves. Most conspicuous, however, was the magnificent abbey ruin, suggesting Fountains Abbey, with its tall, striking, and wholly perfect tower. This is the Abbey of St. Bertin, one of the most striking and almost bewildering monuments that could be conceived. I look up at the superb tower, sharp ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... stand upon my legs, and a young child could overthrow me. I have wept, till my tears are dried up, over the misfortunes of Jerusalem; and yet no enemy has come within sight of her walls, or dug a trench against her. She is devoured by her own children. Ruin and ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... with redoubled forces. The Britons already subdued by their own fears, found the ramparts but a weak defence for them; and deserting their station, left the country entirely open to the inroads of the barbarous enemy. The invaders carried devastation and ruin along with them; and exerted to the utmost their native ferocity, which was not mitigated by the helpless condition and submissive behaviour of the inhabitants [t]. The unhappy Britons had a third time ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... a protest against the theological idea that woman is the instrument of the Devil, who tempted man to his ruin. Very frank is the entire expression, all written by a Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a pure woman whom Fate had freed from the conventional, and who, wanting little and having nothing to lose, not even a reputation, was placed in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... sounds, the din of war's alarms O'er seas and solid grounds, doth call us all to arms, Who for King George doth stand, their honour soon shall shine, Their ruin is at hand, who with the Congress join. The acts of Parliament, in them I much delight, I hate their cursed intent, who for the Congress fight. The Tories of the day, they are my daily toast, They soon will sneak away, who independence boast, Who non-resistant ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the great pecuniary crash of 1837 was at hand. By every mail came news of failures where he expected payments. The wealth, which seemed so certain a fact a few months before, where had it vanished? It had floated away, like a prismatic bubble on the breeze. He saw that his ruin was inevitable. All he owned in the world would not cancel his debts. And now he recalled the horrible recollection that Loo Loo was a part of his property. Much as he had blamed Mr. Duncan for negligence in not manumitting her mother, he had fallen into the same snare. In the fulness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... gallant protection, a quality of the seigneurs of other days. Faithful to the system of the "petite maison," he liked to enrich women,—the only beings who know how to receive, because they can always return. But the poor chevalier could no longer ruin himself for a mistress. Instead of the choicest bonbons wrapped in bank-bills, he gallantly presented paper-bags full of toffee. Let us say to the glory of Alencon that the toffee was accepted with more joy than la Duthe ever showed at a gilt service or a fine equipage offered by the Comte ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... disaster. All her self-confidence fought against it. She must find some other way. At first she thought it would be simple to do so; but as her brain worked upon the problem she found so many difficulties in the way that she again lost hope. The baby would ruin everything. Finally the return of Toby seemed to her to be the first necessity. She must see him. She could do nothing until she saw him. Longing seized her—a quick sense that at least he was her lover, and therefore her partner. She wrote to Toby, asking him to come ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... his verses with a sense of nameless and infinite ruin, such as one feels when the drum and the violin mysteriously come together, in one of Beethoven's Symphonies, to predict the annihilation ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... This affection foretells the ruin of the natural functions, by that peculiar sympathy it has with the liver, and that, therefore, kathydria, or ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... following thine own evil devices, till thou broughtest thyself to this pass, and if God had not vouchsafed me to thee, thou hadst never won free from this strait, for they would have plunged thee into irremediable ruin. How long dost thou expect I shall live to save thee? By Allah, thou hast well-nigh undone me by thy folly and thy perverseness in wishing to go by thyself! But I will not reproach thee with ignorance, for thou art little of wit and hasty.' 'Does not what thou hast brought upon ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... does those dreadful things himself," went on Nora, "but inveigles others into doing them, too. The idea of coming here among us as a friend, and then leading Phil off,—trying to ruin his life!" Nonie's cheeks were scarlet; she was getting madder and madder with ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... me, that to form this hero no less than twelve hundred thousand lives must have been sacrificed; but no sooner had he fallen himself a sacrifice to his vices, than a thousand breaches were made for ruin to enter, and give the last hand to this scene of misery and destruction. His kingdom was rent and divided; which served to employ the more distinct parts to tear each other to pieces, and bury the whole in blood and slaughter. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... consideration against another, she had almost decided that she might ignore this tie. To herself, Olivia Merkell,—Olivia Carteret,—the stigma of base birth would have meant social ostracism, social ruin, the averted face, the finger of pity or of scorn. All the traditional weight of public disapproval would have fallen upon her as the unhappy fruit of an unblessed union. To this other woman it could have had no such significance,—it ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... date-palms, which produce the finest dates known. Here and there are found extensive rice-fields; liquorice, wheat, barley and roses are also cultivated in places. But in general the ancient canals on which the fertility of the country depends have been allowed to go to ruin. The whole land is subject to inundations which render settled agriculture impracticable, and the population consists chiefly of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes whose wealth consists in herds of buffaloes, horses, sheep and goats. The principal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... think so, do you? Well, I'll tell you what I think. It would mean getting rid of one troublesome passenger, as you call yourself, and taking a dozen worse ones on board in the shape of a prize crew. Why, young Burnett, it would mean ruin to me and to my friends, whose money has been invested ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and barbarously destroyed the growing corn. The affrighted inhabitants fled to the woods, and thus a poisoned arrow was planted in their bosoms, which rankled unto the end. A silver cup, in the eyes of European avarice, was a loss which could only be atoned by ruin and devastation; and had the unhappy savage stolen the only child of the boldest settler, a more furious vengeance could not have followed! To such conduct does America owe the undying hatred of the aboriginal tenants of her land, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Philadelphia, and with branches in New York, Washington, and London, closed its doors. Those who know anything about the financial crises of the United States know well the significance of the panic which followed. It is spoken of in all histories as the panic of 1873, and the widespread ruin and disaster which followed was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... large estates of certain individuals who are placed without the ordinary social categories by the magnitude of their fortunes, preventing anything from becoming absolutely settled, as respects them. In Turkey, and in America, the possession of great wealth is very apt to ruin their possessors; proscription, in some form or other, being pretty certain to be the consequences. In Turkey, such has long and openly been the fact, the bow-string usually lying at the side of the strong box; but, in this country, the system is in its infancy, though ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper |
